Motorola is one of the pioneers in telecommunications, having made the world's first commercially available mobile phone, the DynaTAC. That was in 1974, and over the years, Motorola's given the world some of the most memorable handsets in the business. A couple of decades and few ownership changes later today, the company is betting on "Mods" - aftermarket snap-on modular components that can add features such as a powerful speaker, optical zoom, or a projector.
Those are just the ones that the company has launched itself - Motorola has also created a Moto Mod Developer Kit (MDK) that any developer can use to create third-party modules for the Moto Z. To promote the Moto Mod developer ecosystem, Motorola is organising a series of MotoCollide events, the third of which (and the first in India) was held in Bengaluru last week. Gadgets 360 caught up with Stephen McDonnell, Senior Manager for the Moto Mods Ecosystem and Anuj Sharma, Marketing Head for Motorola India to talk about Moto Z and modular computing as a whole.
Was Project Ara too 'geeky'?
Of course, Motorola isn't the first company to attempt a modular future. The most-hyped of these is Google, whose Project Araattempted to create a fully modular phone, where you could swap out the camera as the phone aged. The idea didn't pan out - after a couple of years of attempts, the company gave up on a smartphone that's as configurable as a laptop.
Of course, Motorola isn't the first company to attempt a modular future. The most-hyped of these is Google, whose Project Araattempted to create a fully modular phone, where you could swap out the camera as the phone aged. The idea didn't pan out - after a couple of years of attempts, the company gave up on a smartphone that's as configurable as a laptop.
McDonnell is quite dismissive about Ara. "They didn’t really think about the consumer at all," says McDonnell. "Their whole idea was based around technology, what can you do, but not what the customer wants."
"They wanted to do things like change the specs but that doesn’t really change the consumer experience," he adds. "It was exciting for developers, but they got the priority wrong. I think with LG and Friends - they wanted you to switch off your phone to change parts, and it was a whole process, who is going to do that?"
To drive home the point, he compares that to Motorola's solution - the Mods are hot-swappable, and changing them out is as easy as removing the cover from a phone, and putting a new one on. The whole process takes seconds. "People don't want to leave the Mods on all the time, only when they're using them," he says. "You're going to a cricket match, you put on the Hasselblad module for a couple of hours, take a few pictures, and then you take it off again." If the process is more complicated than that, the modules would end up just sitting in a drawer, unused, he believes.
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